


Deep Down

by Sunnybone



Series: Years and Years [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Fade to Black, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Blue Lions Route, I can't believe I've done this, M/M, Nonbinary My Unit | Byleth, One Night Stands, Pining, Self-Hatred, Spoilers for Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), disaster bi Sylvain, trans felix, when will I let Sylvain know peace?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-09
Updated: 2019-09-09
Packaged: 2020-10-13 06:31:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,670
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20578028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunnybone/pseuds/Sunnybone
Summary: The night of the Garreg Mach ball is not going well for Sylvain; he's bored, horny, and copious amounts of champagne Have Been Consumed. As he's ditching the ball for a date with his hand, he bumps into the Gatekeeper.





	Deep Down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GenericWeebUsername](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GenericWeebUsername/gifts).

> Oh god what have I done lmao, I speculated that after sleeping with Claude, Sylvain probably slept with another guy just to make sure it wasn't just Claude's Bomb Dick Game, and my best friend offered "what if the second guy was the Gatekeeper". I resisted, loudly, for about a week, and then...this happened.
> 
> Also a reminder that by the time of the ball, Sylvain is 20! So... a grown ass boy

Sylvain was bored, and a little lonely, and maybe just a little horny—Felix had been forced to dance at least once by Ingrid, who refused to let him duck out without partaking. Sylvain wished he could have convinced Felix to dance with _him_, and the thought of their bodies so close together, moving in a rhythm, had him sighing and downing another flute of champagne. Felix would kick his ass if he even tried to ask, and anyways Felix had already left. Probably to go and train, and Sylvain toyed with the idea of going to find him, tell him...

Tell him what, that Sylvain had been in love with him since he was fourteen and that no girl had ever meant anything to him? Felix would run him through and call him a liar while doing it, and Sylvain glared down into the empty champagne flute in his hand.

He looked up, scanned the room—he was lonely, and he wouldn't say no to some physical comfort, even from someone he wasn't particularly attached to. He spotted Claude, remembered how warm it had been in his bed, how comfortable and friendly his arms were. But Claude was dancing with the professor, and even from here Sylvain could see the stars in his eyes—hell, the man had whole constellations for Byleth. _Good for him_, he thought, and looked again, but it was all girls and right now he couldn't stand the thought. He would only get angry and be cruel, and he couldn't handle tears tonight.

He set down the empty glass on his way out of the ballroom, resigned to his own hands and some naughty thoughts, but the night air was cool and he took a moment to enjoy it—he was slightly buzzed from all the champagne, and he was warm, and he stopped at one of the many walls overlooking the drop into the Oghma Mountains, the far landscape of dark peaks and valleys. Sylvain leaned on the cold stone and unbuttoned the top buttons on the stuffy dress shirt Ingrid had bullied him into wearing, saying if she had to wear makeup then he couldn't dress like it was another casual day.

He leaned out over the wall, enjoying the breeze, and he was thinking about how cold the snow down in the valley looked with the moonlight on it when someone put a hand on his elbow.

“Hey, it's not safe to lean out that far,” said the man at his elbow, and Sylvain let himself be pulled back, straightening with a little laugh.

“Ah, you're right, thanks.” He looked his concerned new friend over. Not another student, he was dressed too casually, so probably one of the guards off duty—he didn't look like a monk or a priest, after all, and Sylvain had a feeling he knew him. Sylvain would guess they were about the same age, and they were roughly the same height, but Sylvain couldn't place his face—friendly, kinda cute even, with a strong jaw, straight nose, warm brown eyes, all topped off with curly brown hair. Sylvain was still trying to figure it out when the man spoke again and he instantly realized.

“It would be a real shame if you fell over, you know, Professor Byleth would be pretty upset.” It was the gatekeeper—the _gatekeeper_ was _this_ good-looking under that helmet? Sylvain grinned, hands behind his head.

“I would hope more people than just the professor would be upset if I fell to my death,” he said with a little laugh, looking out at the mountains again, and when his eyes cut back he didn't miss the other man's eyes on the opening of his shirt, hungry on the visible slice of collarbone and the hollow of his throat. He could feel his smile shift into something else, not a grin but a welcome. “Shouldn't you get back to your date?” he asked, soft, and there was a little startled noise as their eyes meet.

“Ah, I don't have one.” Sylvain ruffled a hand through his hair, and yes, the other man was staring at him.

“That's a shame, kinda hard to believe. Well,” he said, looking him up and down and taking note of the cute way he fidgeted at the scrutiny, “I guess it's not totally impossible, since I'm alone tonight, too.” There was a narrowing of the eyes as the other man realized he was flirting, and then—

“You're drunk.” Sylvain was caught so off guard he laughed, really laughed until he was leaning against the stone wall, and there was that hand on his elbow again to stop him from tumbling over, but when he stopped laughing and turned towards him and looked up they were very close together, and if Sylvain wasn't horny before he sure was now. Besides that, now he was curious—he had wondered, after that time with Claude, if he really enjoyed sex with men _that_ much or if Claude was just _that _good. He smiled as charming a smile as he could, and he could _feel _the other man inhale.

“I'm a little buzzed, but I wouldn't say drunk. I'm also really tired of this stupid ball, and I would love to get out of here, if you'd like to go with me.” Sylvain leaned in just enough that there was no way the other man could miss the fact he was already hard, and he felt gratified by the little gasp that got. “Otherwise I'll just have to handle this myself, and I think that would be a bit of a waste.” He knew he was pretty much throwing himself at the gatekeeper, but it had been a shitty night and he was just buzzed enough to push the self-loathing off until the morning.

“I really shouldn't, with a—a student,” he said, but he leaned in as he did, and Sylvain chuckled because it was the cutest excuse he'd ever heard, suddenly. He put his hands on the other man's chest, fingers curling in the fabric there, and gave the tiniest tug; there was no resistance.

“I'm not exactly a kid, you know,” he drawled, and he wasn't, hadn't been for a while, only really waited so long to come to Garreg Mach because of Ingrid and Dimitri and _Felix_—Sylvain pulled him in and kissed him until he felt the backs of his legs bump stone, and then they were both bracing on the wall and laughing.

“Oh, _hell_,” and he looked at Sylvain with a mixture of want and resignation. “I must be drunk, too. Alright! But the Professor better never find out.” This set Sylvain off laughing again, but it didn't stop him from kissing the man again.

+

_Well_, Sylvain thought when he woke up in a room in the guard barracks with a slightly fuzzy feeling to his head, _it was definitely _not _just Claude_. He was pleasantly warm, especially along his side, and turning slightly he saw the gatekeeper asleep on his stomach, face half buried in the pillow and breathing softly. Sylvain's eyes swept across the naked curve of his shoulder and back, and he shivered with memory at the pink marks of his nails there. He'd maybe been a _little_ drunker than he'd thought, to leave marks like that.

It was very much like Claude and very different at the same time, because it was warm and comfortable, and because Sylvain hated himself.

He couldn't for the life of him remember the guy's name, though he _knew_ he asked—how the hell he could remember the sex and not his name, Sylvain could not guess, but it definitely made him feel awful. How do you greet someone in the morning with “hello, please tell me your name again because I've forgotten it, but the sex was very good!” and not look like a _complete_ asshole. He wracked his brain, but couldn't grasp it—he felt like it started with an 'a', maybe an 'al', and started trying names, mouthing them. Alec? Alistair? Nothing felt right, though, and instead he mouthed 'Asshole' because that was what he was.

Sylvain was _very _careful as he dressed and left, because he could not stomach the idea of waking the other man and revealing just what a giant asshole he truly was deep down.

+

He had been especially quiet at the top of the dormitory stairs, not wanting to chance running into Ingrid, but he hadn't thought to do the same passing Felix's room. As he walked past the door it cracked open, and Felix, stupidly beautiful even this early in the morning, looked out at him.

Felix sneered at Sylvain in last night's clothes, shirt wrinkled and hair mussed, and Sylvain wanted to die. Of _course_ he would run into Felix, whose bed he would much rather have crawled out of this morning. He'd rather still be in it right now, actually, but.

“You're hopeless,” Felix muttered, and Sylvain wanted to shake him, but it wasn't like he _wasn't_ sneaking back to his room after a night of slightly tipsy but extremely good sex, so, Felix had got him there. Instead he took all that frustration and self-disgust and channeled it into a big, smarmy grin as he put his hands behind his head, walking backwards down the hall towards his room.

“I wouldn't say that, personally—I wasn't hearing any complaints.” Felix's eyes narrowed, and Sylvain couldn't resist digging himself deeper. “Actually, quite the opposite—“

“You're disgusting,” Felix huffed before backing into his room and closing the door, and the smugness melted off of Sylvain immediately. He turned and hurried to his room, because the only thing worse than running into Felix would be running into Dimitri. He flopped face-first onto his bed and hoped no one would need him the rest of the day.

Unfortunately, it was the day they were called to fight demonic beasts in the old chapel, the day Professor Byleth's father died.

**Author's Note:**

> I swan to john the next part of this series will actually have Sylvain/Felix lmaooo
> 
> Gatekeeper can have an actual sex scene when he gets a canon name so I don't have to keep calling him "the other man". Until then, fade to black, pal.
> 
> I also have a short Byleth POV followup to this in a gdoc [here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UBiLLWyjbSM9wWVC0vmG-KX_REgFAfEk_6Q5NuE17FU/edit?usp=sharing) if you're interested! 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!
> 
> Find me on Twitter [@AceMorningStar](https://twitter.com/AceMorningStar)


End file.
